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This article provides a long-term narrative of movements for social change in Bihar, precipitated by the steady rise to political power by the Backward Classes/Castes in the state, since 1989. Locating this moment in a longer momentum of struggle since the 1920s, it probes the antecedents of recent social change in Bihar politics. Contextualising this process within a long recessional, it traces a larger democratic cycle of empowerment going back to the early twentieth century. The article attempts the historicisation of Bihar politics by drawing upon a variety of sources—from official records to newspapers—and supplementing them with relevant secondary literature.

This paper was published in the journal History and Sociology of South Asia and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2230807518767968. ; This article provides a long-term narrative of movements for social change in Bihar, precipitated by the steady rise to political power by the Backward Classes/Castes in the state, since 1989. Locating this moment in a longer momentum of struggle since the 1920s, it probes the antecedents of recent social change in Bihar politics. Contextualising this process within a long recessional, it traces a larger democratic cycle of empowerment going back to the early twentieth century. The article attempts the historicisation of Bihar politics by drawing upon a variety of sources—from official records to newspapers—and supplementing them with relevant secondary literature.

Contributed articles

AbstractExisting accounts of ethnic mobilization have focused on the role of group size or state policy. This paper suggests that narrow identity activism was also non-linearly related to education since poorly-educated groups are unlikely to have an educated elite to participate in activism, while in very educated groups this elite existed but participated in the colonial state or anti-colonial nationalism. This theory is tested using a historical panel dataset of Indian caste groups, with petitions to the colonial census authorities being used as an index of caste activism.